Spirited Away

After watching Miyazaki's Spirited Away more then twice,I realised just how beautiful the visuals are in this film but when i watch the film for the first time i was not paying enough attention to the films visuals, only looking at the film in a animators perspective that time i realised that animation isn't the only thing that makes a film look beautiful. Overall an stunning film, i have seen a few more of Studio Ghibli films and they are all visuals stunning aswell.

Looking at Sound

The use of sound in animation and film has been a vital role within it. This documentary was part of the special features on Wall-e a animated film. Ben Burtt was responsible for the original star wars films and is "considered the father of modern sound design" by Andrew Stanton the director of the film. Wall-E Whereas Disney had always used instruments for sound effects in its animations or going out and actually recording the sounds themselfs.
Burtt starting to creating his own "instruments" out of whatever made the most believable sounds, because sound has to have an emotion that evokes and it is more important then if it is the correct physical sound.

Pencil To Pixel

A documentary called "From Pencils to Pixels" which described the birth of animation through to today's cgi creations. Mainly focussing on Disney and Pixar, one of the earliest well known animators was Walter McKay's creator of Gertie the Dinosaur a moving animation. As McKay animation was playing he brought it to life by making it seem like he was talking to his creation Gertie by calling her over to him, getting it to do tricks and offering her an apple that was thrown onto the screen.
After Gertie the Dinosaur came the first animated superstar Felix the Cat who inspired a generations worth of animated characters. Felix was also the first animated character to be anthropomorphized, by which an animal was given human characteristics. After Felix came the animation that most people reconize as the first, Steam Boat Willy by Walt Disney the first ever animation with sound by that to be recorded with sound other then live a group of musician, with a series of short animations under his belt Walt Disney then was inspired to create the first full length animated film well known as snow white made 1936. The project took four years to complete, with 600+ animators working on the film. After Disney followed the Success of Snow White and continued to make cel animated films for years such as pinocchio, bambi, cinderella and peter pan and many more.
In 1995 a new form of animation was discovered. Pixar animation studios was bought from Lucas Arts by Steve Jobs, John Lasseter took Computer Animation and applied the prinicples of animation to his work, the result was the short animation called Luxo Lamp. This short was very successful and it allowed Pixar to work on their first full feature length film known as Toy Story, Pixar made the largest change to animation in 60 years as Disney had done in the past. Film makers have criticized that Cel animation is a deading art, but with Disney returning to the Cel animation now and studios such as Studio Gihbli making animations such as Spirited Away and ponyo it looks that for many years to come cel is far from dead.

Georges Méliès, Le Voyage Dans La Lun

Writer and creater of Le Voyage Dans La Lun (translatation - a Trip to the Moon),this short film made in 1902 used a combination of camera tricks and studio effects to create one of the first science fiction films, he used effects that amazed audiences and this effects are still being used till this day. He began his career as a stage magician before becoming a film maker. Mellies loved the magic of film making, and with that in mind he used tricks, camera illusions you would say in he film making. On film he could perform many tricks a magician could but even easier with a camera. He discovered what became known as the "mid shot trick" its when you stop the camera in the middle of filming and this would able you to early move an object or person and replace it with something else. He discovered this when his film jammed on one of his early cameras. Also one of his other techniques was the rolling backgrounds, its purpose was in its name it gave the illusion of something falling/flying, and many other techniques.

Some Tests

pan test.

Heres a test of a pan that we're going to have in the bedroom scene, just to show the audience the layout of victor's bedroom so they wouldn't get confussed where they were in the room.

Breathing Test.

One of our breathing tests even tho victors mouth is the only thing moving to show that his sleeping in bed, i don't think we did that badly. moving the mouth was the only thing we could do, because we didn't give to a thought as we we're making him to give him any leave way.

Hallway run test fail.

As we began to film the hallway scene we forgot a crucial principle and that was arcs, and as you can see without that there was no life to the character and no telling what he was doing, also he was way to slow.

Hallway run test 2.

This second attempt as you can see is alot better after using arc principle and after using less frames all so you can tell now what the character is doing.

pushing a table

Table Pushing.

This test was just to check if we were able to make victor look like he was puhing the table across the floor, its not perfect but its believable that he is.

walk cycle monster test

Test 1 shot in twos.

Test 2 shot in threes.

The two videos above are of the first test walk i did for the monster, as you can see he drags his feet across the floor and i cant settle with that so i did a second test walk which are below.

Test 3 shot in twos.

Test 4 shot in threes.

Test 5 shot in twos n three.

The three video above are of a better walk cycle, i like how the monster keeps his one foot, the heavy one on the floor and drags it along. I feel that its really effective and goes well the the creature. The way that i edited the test 5 video was that with his heavy foot that he drags along that movement was shoot in threes to slow it down more, but the other leg was shot in twos and that helped alot to show the difference in the weight of both legs.